


Kicking the Hornets' Nest

by Viridian5



Series: Tangled String [7]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Clones, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-03-31
Updated: 1998-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:23:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder goes to Brian for advice about Krycek and gets more than he bargained for.  <i>XF</i>/<i>Kalifornia</i> crossover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kicking the Hornets' Nest

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Patient X" and "The Red and the Black." Brian, Carrie, and Early Grayce courtesy of Dominic Sena. Dark Angel/Alice Pryor/Serafine Fitzwalter/Cheryl Elend is mine.
> 
> Thanks to Small Woodinat Creature for proofreading, fact-checking, and pronoun-testing.
> 
> This story picks up a month after "One of the Chosen (I and II)." I explain the important stuff as I go, so you don't have to read the other stories to make sense of this, but it would definitely help. And it would make me like you better.

_"You wear guilt  
Like shackles on your feet,  
Like a halo in reverse"_  
  -- "Halo" from Depeche Mode

_"Looking for love but hoping for evil"_  
  -- "Living in Deep 13" from _Mystery Science Theater 3000_  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The man tied to the chair opened his eyes and felt his heart sink. He didn't know where he was or who knocked him out. Then his eyes settled on the tall figure standing near him. Lanky, dressed all in black, with a unique nose that let the man recognize his captor. The studded collar around his captor's neck threw him off a bit though. He breathed a sigh of relief until the figure he thought was Mulder turned his face, revealing a scar on the left side.

Brian Kessler smiled nastily. "What a difference a scar makes, huh? You went from thinking, 'Here's the guy we can lie to and sabotage, and he'll keep coming back for more,' to 'Oh, shit, this is the clone who's hanging with the Angel of Death.'"

"I had--"

"Nothing to do with any of that, right? Plausible deniability. Doesn't matter. We're going to play a little game. Here's America's favorite game show host, the Angel of Death! Give her a hand! Oh, right, you can't."

Dark Angel walked into the room. "We're going to play Let's Make A Deal. We have some fabulous prizes for you. Tell him what he could win, Bunny."

"He could win his life or a quick, painless death. I know, you're about to ask how a quick, painless death could be a prize. It's a prize for being quick and painless, as opposed to the alternative you get if you lose."

"How do I play?" the prisoner asked with a sneer.

"You tell us things we want to know," Dark Angel said. "But first let's tell our audience about you. You recently were promoted to your current position. Your hobbies include supporting eugenics experiments, stabbing people in the back, sending taunting e-mail messages, playing with people's lives, and putting harmless old ladies under surveillance for the crime of regaining contact with the daughter you and your buddies stole from her." She snarled, "I don't appreciate you sending people to intimidate my mother. I only just found her again, and I'm not losing her now."

"I didn't have anything to do with that."

Suddenly she had a gun in her hand and shot his leg so quickly that he screamed as much from surprise as pain. "Wrong answer. I've done my research."

"Then what do you need me for?" he asked in a choked tone.

"Your challenge is to give me something I don't have."

"Do you know that you and Kessler are brother and sister? Puts a crimp in your lovelife, doesn't it?"

She leaned back into Brian's arms, and he held her tight. She hooked his studded collar with her finger. "We know. Fox Mulder multiplied to the infinite power and Samantha Mulder given three sisters similar but not identical to herself. We're Kitsune7's Imoto with Imoto2's Kitsune. You probably find the mismatch of brother and sister unorthodox, but we believe that variety adds spice to life. In the absence of Elizabeth Kessler and Warren Elend, we'll have to do for one another. It has to be tough for you seeing your last surviving control Kitsune looking so uncontrolled."

"You two are sick."

"I'm afraid so. That's another thing we already know. Should I shoot out the other leg, Bunny?"

"No!" their prisoner said. "You weren't supposed to be like this, Kessler."

"You and your friends dragged me kicking and screaming into this world. Don't you dare try to blame me for deciding that I'm better off kicking," Brian said.

The prisoner looked back to Dark Angel. "Pryor, the man you call Mr. Morley is still alive! He's--"

"--living in Canada. I know that too." She shot the other leg.

"What do you hope to gain here?" he screamed.

"I killed your predecessor and his predecessor, but more people keep stepping up to the plate. How many of you do I have to kill before you stop?"

"The Consortium toyed with the idea of making Kessler a fixer after some of the top brass saw his after-Grayce interview! They only reconsidered because they were voted down by the people who still saw value in him as the last surviving control!"

"I didn't know that, Peanut," Brian said.

"Watch the master spider in action," she said. "He throws out a few breadcrumbs, then reels you in when you reach for them. He wraps you in the sweetest cocoon of lies and half-truths then devours your soul." Dark Angel shot the prisoner in the head. "Now he's gone."

Brian took a deep breath. "I know he's responsible for so much of what happened to us, especially recently, but this doesn't make me feel better. What did you want from him?"

"Killing shouldn't, and I got what I wanted from him. This is called kicking the hornets' nest. You shake up their happy home--"

"--and watch where the insects scurry to."

"Very good, you have a talent for this. Now we have to get ready for tonight."

"What are we going to do tonight, Serafine?"

She smiled. "Something a bit unusual actually. We're going to talk with Mulder."

******************************************************

Feeling conspicuous and out of place, Mulder scanned the dark room for Serafine and Brian. Dressing in all-black, in fact dressing a lot like Brian tended to, didn't make him fit in any better than if he'd arrived in a suit. That attitude difference tripped him up at the door. He'd almost gotten in free on the strength of his almost perfect resemblance to Brian or Brian's almost perfect resemblance to Mulder.

The music pounding through the club made Mulder's head swim, but his eyes still picked out Serafine and Brian on the dance floor, slow dancing in the middle of the crowd. They rocked spooned together, with her leaning into him with his arms wrapped tightly around her. Her smile deepened as Brian whispered something into her ear.

Mulder felt a deep stab of jealousy at their casual affection and obvious trust in one another. He remembered last night, staring down the barrel of a gun, not knowing whether his betrayer, former partner, and lover would fire or not. It seemed that every time Mulder resigned himself to accepting something horrible Krycek did, he found out about something even worse. How far could this go?

Brian and Serafine finally noticed him and directed him to a table. When Brian and Mulder took a seat, Serafine said, "I'm going to go play Twister. I don't think they'll let you in on it again after you hustled everyone last night. You made, what, two hundred dollars?" Mulder noticed in the candlelight that her bare arms didn't look scarred anymore. He would have to ask Brian about that.

"I couldn't have done it if you hadn't hid your extreme flexibility until the end."

"Now that I know everyone wants to play me _because_ I'm so flexible, I don't have to hide it anymore. You sure you don't want to play?"

"Sera, I have red-green color deficiency."

"It's not like anyone else can really make out the colors by candlelight either. Mulder could watch. You haven't lived, Mulder, until you've seen a bunch of adults dressed in leather, vinyl, fishnet, and chains giggling and twisting themselves into pretzels."

"Now I really don't want to," Brian said.

She smiled and gave him a lingering kiss. "See you later, Bunny."

Brian watched her leave the room then asked, "So what can I do for you?" Brian wore a silver cross on a chain and a studded collar with a big metal loop on the front that seemed to be designed to have a chain lead attached to it. Otherwise, Mulder and Brian wore the same outfit, but Brian's comfort in his clothing and his choice of neckwear underscored the differences between them.

Brian looked so happy that he seemed to glow from within. Mulder tried to remember the last time he felt like that for anything other than a brief period of time. He figured it to be the time when he first started on the X-Files, happy that he'd found a way to stop Violent Crimes from using him until he broke into so many pieces they wouldn't be able to put him back together again. He only had to ruin his reputation to do it and felt a sick joy in flushing his brilliant career down the toilet.

The last time Mulder saw Brian, Brian had been recovering from a close pass with a nervous breakdown, camouflaging his own pain and weariness by taking on the traits of the people around him. Mulder, who also had that kind of empathy that put him a little too far in other people's minds, knew how easy and tempting it could be to submerge the pain that way. Now Brian seemed centered, relaxed, wholly himself, and confident in the love of a woman he trusted who encouraged his irreverence.

"Just to talk. Not business," Mulder said in the necessary low shout. Brian raised an eyebrow. "Recent events have helped me see that I'm a bit isolated. My work on the X-files isn't conducive to having a social life."

"Oh, please. You kept people at arms' distance even while working Violent Crimes." Seeing the look on Mulder's face, Brian said, "I assume that you came to me for honesty. Anyone can throw you a line of bullshit."

It never failed to unnerve Mulder to hear Brian talk with a version of Mulder's voice. Brian was one of Mulder's clones, created by the Consortium as part of a vast psychological experiment regarding the creation of personality. The last survivor of the control group Kitsunes, or Fox clones, Brian had been placed with a family that had been ordered to act like Mulder's, to repeat the major events in Mulder's life, to see whether major events or a combination of smaller things truly set personality. Thus, as the last surviving control, Brian was more like Mulder than any of the other surviving clones.

Samantha had been included in the Consortium's genetic experiments--only in her case the Imoto, "little sister," line created to be matched with the control Kitsunes--had been designed to be genetically similar to Samantha but not identical. Dark Angel recently found out that she was an Imoto, which genetically made her Mulder and Brian's sister.

The whole recently discovered mess still made Mulder's head spin, but at least it gave him a family of sorts. "How is everyone?" Mulder asked.

Brian gave him a look that said I-know-what-you're-up-to-and-I-can-wait-you-out. "Jake has committed about as far as he's capable to a woman he seems to be in love with. The UN is still hunting Douglas, but Sera stashed him somewhere that they'll probably never figure to look. Douglas is actually putting a little weight on now that he's in the household of one of the best and most coercive cooks I've ever met. Sera got that dermabrasion done on her arms and legs like she wanted to, leaving only slight indents, but I miss her scars. A friend is renting my beach house in my absence. So far no one has firebombed it. Yet. Mom's doing fine now that we got the surveillance off her back."

"Mom?"

"Rachel Elend. She said that if I saw you again I should say hi for her." Brian leaned forward. "Mulder, I was wondering if you could check up on something for me."

"Couldn't Angel do it?"

Mulder couldn't identify the expression that briefly crossed Brian's now-blank face. "No, not this time," Brian said. "I want you to find out for me if Cheryl Elend ever broke her left collarbone as a child. I'm sure you have people who can get you old medical records." Then he switched gears, posture, and facial expression as he asked, "So, again, how can I help you?"

Mulder wanted to follow up on what Brian had just asked for but found himself firmly swept back on his original track. "I wanted your opinion on something. A relationship I have that I can't talk about with anyone else."

"Ah. Okay. Dump him. You tried to keep it at detached, mind-blowing sex and ignored the fact that you can't have sex with someone without forming some sort of emotional connection. He does terrible things, disappears for long stretches, switches sides at the drop of a hat, and is untrustworthy. Your problem is that you know all this but can't get him out of your head anyway. He's like the kind of venereal disease that you can live with in slight discomfort most of the time but flares up into something more serious every so often."

"Brian! He's not that bad."

"I should thank him for behaving like a decent human toward me last time instead of, what, raping or killing me? You don't know why you feel the way you do. I have some suggestions. He's your shadow, who does all the things you won't. He even lost an arm like you were supposed to. You have a self-punishing streak that gets off on the danger and abuse. You want to destroy yourself. It comes from your past with your dysfunctional family. You should hear Sera's theory on how you're reliving your relationship with your father through A.D. Skinner. You get off on the idea that Krycek's completely inappropriate for you. You want the illicit." Brian interrupted his speech by taking a gulp from the glass in front of him then sucking on an ice cube.

Sometimes it scared Mulder how Brian could read him. "I don't have to listen to this." But Mulder couldn't look away from Brian's face, underlit by the candle on the table. A face almost exactly like the one he saw in the mirror every morning with a similar but not identical mind behind the eyes. He felt a strange pull from Brian.

"Then leave. Most of all, you don't feel like you have to hide your dark parts that you hide from everyone else from Krycek. After all, he's the last person who can pass judgment. I use those parts of myself now, and I feel much better for it." Brian smiled in a way that made Mulder's heart wrench. "If you weren't so afraid of arguing with yourself, you wouldn't need to come to me to hear your own voice taking the other side."

"Last night I saw him again for the first time in a month. He knocked me down, pointed a gun at my chest, looked at me with the tenderest look in his eyes, kissed me, and restored my faith in my mission. I never thought for a moment before that he might love me."

"Are you sure it was love? Maybe it's the affection a man feels for a favored pet."

"It's not that!"

"You're so certain that you came to talk to me. So far his affection for you means that he'll hand you over to your enemies and put you in danger but balk just short of serious permanent damage to you."

"I can't talk to Scully about him."

"For obvious reasons." Brian sighed. "After her own experiences with implants, did she let you take that tracer out of your neck? Sera removed mine immediately."

"No, she didn't. I still have it." The noise and the crowd made Mulder more nervous by the second. "Could we go somewhere quieter and a little less public?"

"Sure. Downstairs. Follow me." Brian finished off his glass then got up and led Mulder away.

To Mulder's amazement, downstairs was even darker than upstairs. The music had been filtered into a dull pounding. Brian led him to a far, secluded end of the hall. Mulder found himself grabbing Brian, leaning him against the wall, and kissing him without really thinking about what he was doing.

No matter how hard he tried, Mulder couldn't figure out what mental processes had led to this moment, couldn't trace the steps. Confusion and loneliness? An effort to get a surrogate for the person he couldn't have? Maybe it was the odd magnetism Brian and Serafine seemed to have. Maybe it was the feeling that he could trust Brian utterly, and he needed that now. Or maybe it was the thought of taking masturbation in a direction he'd never thought possible.

Brian didn't fight him. Brian's lips, unlike the rest of him, were cool and wet, but not with liquor as Mulder had suspected. He'd never realized that Brian had been drinking ice water. Brian smelled of clove and tobacco smoke, leather, metal, clean sweat, heat, a little gardenia from Dark Angel, and, fainter still, gunpowder. He smelled sweet and exotic, like he tasted. When Mulder had last held Brian under very different circumstances, Brian had been worn too thin by stress. Since then Brian had put on more lean muscle. The music pounded through the walls and Brian's body into Mulder's in a kind of circuit.

Mulder had never done this with someone so close to him in height, with Brian maybe a quarter of an inch taller. Their faces and groins touched perfectly. Mulder suddenly wondered if Brian had the same s ensitive spots as he did. He stroked the small of Brian's back and felt the whole body shudder in his arms as Brian gasped. Facing such success, Mulder paid attention to every point he knew of, until Brian was writhing, inarticulate, against him.

But when he grabbed Brian's wrist to tend to its underside, Brian yanked it away. "No," Brian gasped.

"The scars still bother you?"

"The psychological scars, yeah."

"But you had bruises around them last time I saw you."

"Sera is stronger than you could ever guess. She spends most of her life holding herself back. I made her lose track of that, and she almost broke my arms in her passion. She was really sorry."

That threw some cold water on Mulder. "Oh."

"You're starting to think again. This wouldn't bother her, which is why she deliberately left us alone. That and not wanting to hear about Krycek."

"Why were you going along? Was this some kind of mercy fuck?" Mulder grated out.

"Oh, yeah, I'm St. Brian, generously giving of my body to those less fortunate. Go to hell." Brian moved closer still and whispered into Mulder's ear, "Someone's watching. I don't know if it's a voyeur or a professional, government voyeur. I have to get closer to see. I have a gun tucked into the waistband on the right side." Brian followed his words with a tongue flick to exactly the right part of Mulder's ear, making Mulder moan. "So that's how you know where to touch," Brian said.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Maybe start us moving in the right direction in a fit of passion then let me go at the right time."

Mulder started bouncing them off the walls in the direction Brian had indicated while Brian laughed through his kisses. Then Brian tapped Mulder's back twice, and Mulder let him go. Brian flew into a dark corner, and the sounds of a scuffle followed. "Speak of the devil," Brian called out. He dragged Krycek, disarmed and confined, into Mulder's view. "You felt Mulder getting horny and just had to be here, huh? It's a good thing I got to Krycek before he whipped it out watching us."

"Fox, you spent so much time dissuading me from Brian, and this what you do the moment my back is turned?" Krycek asked with a not-entirely-feigned outrage.

"I'll leave you two lovebirds alone," Brian said.

Krycek grabbed him by the wrist. "You don't have to go. I'm sorry I interrupted."

Brian yanked it free. "I don't approve of your skill with a needle and thread," he said coldly. "Be thankful I won't tell Angel you're here. She thinks I was too gentle with you last time." He turned his back and stalked toward the stairs.

"Brian!" Mulder called to him. Brian paused on the steps. "Are you okay?"

"I could use a cold shower, but other than that I'm fine. You're such a tease, Mulder." The light tone took the sting from Brian's words. "I won't tell her Krycek is here, but I don't suggest lingering. She's almost psychic at times." He leapt up the steps two at a time.

Without Brian there, Mulder and Krycek lapsed into silence as each inevitably thought about their past encounters and all the bad blood between them that no amount of mind-blowing sex or tender feelings could wipe away. Krycek retrieved his gun from the floor and asked, "Did you get to the base in time?"

"I don't know. After a whiteout I don't remember what happened. I don't know if it was missing time or a memory purge. I don't know which side won that round," Mulder said bitterly.

"I'm sorry. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything else. There's only so much we can do."

Then they were holding one another tight, as if drawn together by magnetism. "I don't know how long I can go on like this," Mulder said softly into Krycek's ear. "The extreme highs and the lows. The moral compromises. Constantly being surrounded by death. Never being in the right place at the right time. The fact that I have to take so many things on faith. The feeling that I'm helpless and everyone is pulling my strings. Is it so wrong to want at least one pure and certain thing in my life? And, no matter how attached I am to you, you're not it, Alex. I don't think you'll ever be it. You're part of the problem."

Krycek kissed him. "I never mean to hurt you, Fox. In a perfect world things would be very different, but in this one I'm often forced to do things you would never forgive me for."

"I'm so tired of it all," Mulder said as he relaxed into Krycek's slow, gentle kisses and caresses and ceased to be for a while. A pounding from the stairway broke him out of his trance.

Brian hit the floor at a run. "You have to get out of here. Angel took one look at me and figured out what was going on."

"Then how did you get here before her?" Krycek asked, suspicious as always.

"I think she wants to give you a sporting head start before she hunts you down and kills you."

"You don't seem to want me dead. Why don't you just tell her that?"

"She doesn't trust my judgment where you're concerned; she's seen your effect on Mulder. You can get out the same way I'm sure you got in, by the fire exit."

Krycek gave Mulder one last lingering kiss then dashed out the door. Three minutes later Mulder and Brian heard gunfire coming from outside, and Brian had to restrain Mulder from rushing out to his death. This went on for ten minutes with Mulder struggling frantically against Brian's iron grip and the noise continuing until finally all went quiet. They both waited there strung taut with anxiety for a long minute before the door open to reveal Angel and Krycek standing side by side, each holding a smoking gun. Bodies littered the alley behind them

"We got the hornets' attention," she said.

Krycek looked at her sidelong, obviously ready to defend himself if she turned on him. "You stirred everyone up in some convoluted plot to kill me?"

She instantly had a gun to his head. "No, for other reasons. It looked like most of them were here for you on their own, though. You've been kicking a few things loose yourself lately, so don't blame it all on me. Helping me out here tonight earned you a temporary reprieve. Use it wisely." She put the gun away and walked away, pausing only to squeeze Brian's shoulder as she passed to go back upstairs.

While Brian stared after her, Mulder asked, "What now?"

"I have to go," Krycek said. "It looks like everyone knows where I am. If I stayed I would be putting you in danger for no reason, Fox. Don't worry, I'll come back to see you as soon as I can." Krycek held Mulder close and kissed him until they both needed to stop for air. "I love you," he whispered into Mulder's ear then let go and left.

"It doesn't ever end. I could use a drink," Mulder said softly as he watched Krycek go.

Brian took him by the arm to lead him upstairs. "Have you ever tried a Red Death? Serafine swears by them."

******************************************************

Mulder woke up, rested and without a hangover, in bed snuggled next to Brian, who wasn't wearing anything other than his cross and studded collar. Mulder wore even less. He smiled a little as he remembered a night of shared secrets, experiences, and finally shared intimacies to create one of the oddest, most intense, and sweetest bouts of lovemaking he'd ever had. As partners went, Brian ranked up there with Krycek but for entirely different reasons. Mulder and Brian had almost read one another's minds last night. Brian had Mulder basking in his happiness like a cat in sunlight until Mulder had felt happy himself.

In a little while Mulder figured that Angel would come back from the "errands" she said she had to run last night smelling of blood as Brian said she would, but for now Mulder clung to his afterglow and pondered fate and inextricable relationships.

He knew he would see Krycek again.

### End


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